I finished Chapter 11, “Unknown Pleasures”, with it coming in at 8,600 words. It covers roughly 1970-1990, including the rise of aboveground kink organizations like TES, Society of Janus, GMSMA, and PEP, as well as the unfortunate decline of the gay male leather culture due to AIDS and other factors. The second half covers kink’s infection of/appropriation by mainstream culture, through music and fashion.
Let me come clean and say I didn’t finish a draft by the end of 2013, nor am I particularly close. I am closer to completion, having made significant progress by finishing a few chapters. Furthermore, I have a clearer view of the path ahead.
Currently I’m working on the chapter that covers about 1970 to 1990, the post-Stonewall, pre-Internet era. This will cover the rise of aboveground kink organizations like TES, Janus, Samois, LSM and GMSMA, and how they coped with the AIDS crisis and other challenges. One of the interesting dynamics of this period was how the previous generation of gay leathermen interacted with the new crop of straights, bisexuals and lesbians. The post-1970 BDSM culture was built on the infrastructure of leathermen, both their venues and their expertise. Which is not to say that other communities didn’t have their own stories to tell.
In that light, it’s a bit sad that the relationship was always a bit unstable and didn’t last. In the 1980s, the impact of AIDS and the gentrification of leatherman districts in San Francisco and New York City decimated those communities, and straight/bi organizations basically split off from the leatherman culture.
I’m in touch with some of the founders of TES and GMSMA, and they’ve provided some much-appreciated resources. This is also a bit dicey, as I’m describing people who may still be alive. By necessity, this book will be a broad and not particularly deep.
I definitely think I can finish a draft this year, and then start sending queries to agents and publishers.
Weighing in at 6,100 words, “The Velvet Underground” covers roughly 1945-1970, including the gay male leather culture; the fetish porn production business centered around NYC with artists like John Willie, Eric Stanton and Gene Bilbrew and models like Bettie Page and Tana Louise; and a little bit about the contact-service-based heterosexual kink scene. I would like to do more about the heterosexual scene as it existed then, but I just don’t have the references yet. Thus, the chapter is a little shorter and rougher than I would like.
I want to cover Story of O (1954), but it doesn’t fit in a chapter largely about American pulp porn. I may need to do a chapter about high literary kink porn, like O and The Image.
The other problem I have to face is I kind of skipped over the 1910-1945 period, apart from a few bits in the fascism chapter, and I don’t have enough material to make a strong theme for a chapter. It would be a grab bag/”and then…” chapter. Friends have counseled me that it is better to admit the limited availability of source material and cover what I can than just skip over it.
Next up is chapter 10, roughly 1970 to 1990, which covers the first aboveground kink organizations and the articulation of the kink ethos; the professionalization of the kink porn industry; the punk-kink dialectic; and the influence on the mainstream, such as fashion and movies like Nine and a Half Weeks.
I think that pushing forwards to a complete draft by the end of the year might be feasible, but it has other values in that it shows me areas I need to research, and just having something I could show to prospective publishers with the caveat “It needs some work.”
Though it took longer than I thought, I did finally finish chapter 8, which covers the relationship between fascism/militarism and BDSM, roughly running from WWI to the second Gulf War. This chapter cuts across historical periods quite a bit.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that I can’t include everything. Much as I’d like to talk about things like TE Lawrence’s kinks or the psychodynamics of fascism in literature, there just isn’t room. I’m telling a story, and that involves deciding what is and isn’t relevant.
Next is chapter 9, which starts with the post-WWII period (early gay male leather culture, the Klaws, John Willie’s Bizarre) and ends circa 1972 (professionalization of BDSM porn industry, first above-ground BDSM organizations). Structuring this chapter will be a little tricky, as there are several different movements in parallel that only slightly interact with each other.
My goal is to finish some kind of rough draft by the end of the year, which means three chapters plus the introduction and conclusion in a month and a half. That looks pretty daunting, particularly as this is the period that I know the least about.
I want to help out the good people at the Leather History conference (October 25-27, 2013, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina), though I won’t be going this year, alas. They’re featuring people like Master Alex Keppeler, Mama Vi Johnson (co-organizer of the Carter-Johnson Library), Master Taino and other top-notch people.
Once again, I spent Labour Day weekend at the Masters And slaves Together conference.
Though the hotel was about an hour’s drive from the Washington Beltway, it was surrounded by a bleak post-modern landscape of hotels, office parks and strip malls. The closest thing to a landmark I saw was a Krispy Kreme in which the doughnut assembly line was located next to a large window and you could see the entire process of the dough being formed, pre-baked, deep fried and then carried on a conveyor belt through a waterfall of sugar frosting that would give you Type 2 diabetes just by looking at it.
Welcome to e[lust] – The only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month. Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions it’ll be here at e[lust]. Want to be included in e[lust] #51? Start with the newly updated rules, come back October 1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!
TO THE MAN WHO OWNS MY SUBMISSION
All blogs that have a submission in this edition must re-post this digest from tip-to-toe on their blogs within 7 days. Re-posting the photo is optional and the use of the “read more…” tag is allowable after this point. Thank you, and enjoy!
Dressing Up for Master
2 nights of great sex – Monday
Marking My Body
Let’s Get It On
Better Lucky Than Good
starry night
Master’s Filthy Whore
Silence
Watching
Eat Dust
We Made a Sex Tape
Incapable of Thinking
Spank Bank
Hickory, dickory, dock…
Oatmeal and Almost Orgasms
Classroom Adventure
The Inspection
The Hood
Opportunity Knocks
Little Red
Remember Me
Scorched Flesh
Awakening
Lolita Twenty-Thirteen, Part Eight
So Easily Bruised
Under the Desk
The Q&A’s of Stainless Steel Sex Toys
Triggers and PTSD
Palate Cleanser
Relationships: Is a sexless marriage normal?
Why Premature Ejaculation is Hot
Casual Encounters on trains and at stations
I wouldn’t really class a client as a lover
Introducing Me
Why Bad Sex Toy Reviews Are Important
You never know who you’re going to meet.
I want. . .
The Grand Old Duke of York …
Strap-on Sex & Empowerment
Never Thought
Two Cocks, One Mouth, One Excited Jade
Aural Sex
Why I Stay Silent
Sub in Space
Hotter Sex Through Intellect
Nazisploitation and how it relates to BDSM
Service and Ritual
No Stupid (Kink) Questions: Episode 18 – SSC
Kink of the week: Exhibitionism
Pegging: Fun for men, awesome for women
I will be presented on the history of eroticized slavery at the 2013 Master/slave Conference this Sunday at 11am. I greatly enjoyed the conference last year and I look forward to seeing familiar faces and meeting new people too. If you see me there, don’t be shy, say hello!
Watch for updates as I go.
I had hoped to finish the first draft of Chapter 7 by the end of July, but that wasn’t to be. Once part of a completely overlong chapter, I mainly just knocked it down to 8,000 words and restructured a bit. I removed some redundant quotes, particularly the bits from My Secret Life.
This is mainly about the upper class kinksters of the Victorian era, and how they interacted with the psychological establishment of the era. There was an interesting dialectic between art and science in this period, with artists looking to science for inspiration about the extremes of human nature, and scientists borrowing names and concepts from artists.
Next chapter is “Every Woman Adores a Fascist”, formerly “Age of War”. I’ve decided I can’t follow a linear chronology, at least in this chapter, which covers the Nazisploitation aesthetic and the tenuous links between fascism and sadomasochism, running from at least the rise of fascism in the 1930s to the Italian Nazisploitation film boom of the late 1970s. This is one of the trickiest subjects to tackle, which can be loosely grouped under the heading of “cultural trauma play”, along with raceplay.
This is the master list of all posts in The Curious Kinky Person’s Guide to the Fifty Shades Trilogy.
Also check out the Ebook edition.
